10 Batsmen With The Funniest Batting Stance Ever In International Cricket

Cricket has always been known as a technical sport. If you get your technique right, be it the batsmen or the bowlers, you are bound to excel in the sport. However, there have been precedents who have not been conventional in their approach and have looked to defy this theory.

With the advent of T20 cricket over the years, unorthodox methods in cricket have become a commonplace event. The game has now witnessed multiple experiments, with the batsmen adopting new ways of scoring runs.

Some of them have had strange ways of holding the bat, whilst some others used very bizarre stances. The stance is the base of batting as it helps the batsman to face a delivery. Nevertheless, there have been instances when the batsmen have tried to experiment with it and have even proved out to be successful.

Here, we’ll have a look at such 10 batsmen, who have had very unusual batting deportments.

10 Batsmen With The Funniest Batting Stance Ever

1. Shivnarine Chanderpaul

One of the greatest West Indies cricketers and most-capped player for them in Tests, Shivnarine Chanderpaul perhaps had the most weird-looking batting stance. He had a front-on stance, wherein he stood with his chest facing the bowler and bat resting in front of his legs. Both his eyes would firmly be stationed on the bowler every time he came running in.

He stood at a 90-degree-angle to the normal batting position. The cricketer however never had any issue with his unusual stance, as it helped him score tons of runs, 30 Test hundreds at an average over 50.

2. George Bailey

The former Australian skipper often took a stance in which, his back faces the bowler and his bat stands right in front of the fielder at point. He keeps his back foot very side-on. This lists him among the batsmen with a funny batting stance.

Bailey once said after the game that my tendency when the ball is swinging is to turn my hip to face the bowler, which then makes my hands lead out and it would get me into a lot of trouble. So it’s just something I’ve been tinkering with to try and make sure my back foot stays as side-on as possible.

3. Rory Burns

The Surrey skipper has a quirky style when he bats with his chin rubbing against his right shoulder as he takes his stance before crouching and getting ready to play. He does it as part of his routine, and it helps because he is left-eye dominant so it allows him to get the best sight of the bowlers and the ball.

And yet Burns knows that the lot of any new batsman to Test cricket is the forensic levels of scrutiny that goes with the job as former players pick over every detail of what you do right and crucially what you do wrong.

4. Steve Smith

Steve Smith too, has a bizarre stance. He stands with a considerable gap separating his feet and keeps swerving his bat. He shuffles and walks across the line before playing a shot and gets them executed, thanks to his high back-lift.

At times, Smith ends up irritating the bowlers and even viewers with too much shuffling across. But this batting style has made him the top batsman in the world across formats.

5. Kevin Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen had an unusual batting stance and technique. Whenever he came out to bat, Pietersen would stand at the crease with his feet wide apart from each other and played with a high backlit. The distance between his legs would be so much that a small-sized vehicle may easily pass through the gap.

Further, he would keep shuffling and walking across the pitch, making it all the more difficult for the bowlers to bowl at. However, this never proved out to be costly for the English cricketer as he always remained very concentrated while batting on the crease. KP went on to score a total of 8,181 runs in his 104-match test career.

6. Lance Klusener

Lance Klusener’s baseball-like’ batting position did earn him a lot of accolades as he accumulated runs at will. He would stand with his bat going as high as his shoulders and then clobber the ball with his club-like bat. The high back-lift that he had allowed him to hit freely. This lists him among the batsmen with unusual batting stance.

However, once the bowlers found him out and decoded his batting style by finding chinks in his armour, his career graph only went downhill and gradually one of the brightest stars faded out of international cricket.

7. Graham Gooch

Graham Gooch is widely remembered as a run-machine. With 8,900 Test runs, he was England’s leading run-scorer until Alastair Cook broke it in 2015.

Gooch had an unorthodox batting stance with a very exaggerated backlift. He batted equally well against both pacers and spinners.

8. Hashim Amla

This run-machine from South Africa, too, has an awkward-looking batting stance, which is highly effective for him. Amla stands with a high back-lift and his bat pointing towards the gully region. But despite this unusual stance, Amla has scored tons of runs across formats.

The South-African has amassed more than 18000 runs across all formats in international cricket and has also scored a total of 55 centuries in all the formats he has played in. Amla has truly been a legendary batsman for the Proteas.

9. Fawad Alam

Pakistani batsman Fawad Alam also has a Chanderpaul-like stance. The only difference being the gap between the legs, which is more in Fawad’s case. His ugly-looking stance allows him to play more freely and get a better view of the ball while it gets delivered from the bowlers’ hands. Unfortunately, he has never got a deserved longer run in the Pakistani side.

10. Abhishek Nayar

Nayar made it to the Indian team once. But he has been the talked about player, not for his all-round skills, albeit for his bizarre-looking stance. The player, also a southpaw, has again Chanderpaul-like wide-footed stance.

The notable difference however between their stances is Nayar’s crouching posture, which he makes while taking guard. His stance, which has been effective for him all through his career, makes for one of the ugliest-looking stances in the history of cricket.

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